


rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep

by emkayss



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Mild Gore, beef squad plus kuroo, coffee shop au + crazy underground magical world, magical realism gone too far
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emkayss/pseuds/emkayss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over his last year of high school, Hajime draws three cards. He holds them in close to his chest, protective, as if keeping them a secret. </p><p>The first one: a spot at one of Japan’s best schools. The second: a decent sum of scholarship cash. </p><p>And the third. A chance to slip back into the half world he’d fallen into when he was eleven, populated with colours he still can’t name and someone whose face he still can’t remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rhymes for your waking, rhythms for your sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Wassup and welcome to this shitshow of a fic! This was inspired by way too many things to name, but basically I mashed up coraline and the wind up bird chronicle into this weird thing that was once magical realism and is now ... I don't know what it is now.
> 
> Also: I have made the decision to tag relationships/characters as they show up, in a vain attempt to declutter the summary. The title is from Eavan Boland's poem "Child of Our Time."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we are introduced to our main cast of characters, Hajime and Daichi relocate to Tokyo for university, and Hajime takes a small trip into a forgotten world. Is that what we're calling it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> creds to good ol eavan boland for the chapter title. you may notice a trend here.

Over his last year of high school, Hajime draws three cards. He holds them in close to his chest, protective, as if keeping them a secret.

The first one: a spot at one of Japan’s best schools. The second: a decent sum of scholarship cash.

And the third. A chance to slip back into the half world he’d fallen into when he was eleven, populated with colours he still can’t name and someone whose face he still can’t remember.

Granted, he’s not sure if he’ll find someone to pull him in by his wrist, or if he’d even be able to find it himself. Hajime isn’t even sure what _it_ is. A wooden door with a rusty key? A long, glowing tunnel that Hajime has to climb through on his knees? A shimmering portal that gives no hint as to what’s on the other side?

Hajime is eighteen, with his high school diploma in one hand and a key to his second-floor dorm room in the other, when he steps off the platform and onto the train to Tokyo with one last wave to his parents. Lush green hills and fields roll by outside the window, worn houses and buildings scattered at first, and then drawn together, higher, as Hajime travels further south. He can’t see the sky over the skyscrapers well before the train starts to slow.

By some miracle, Hajime has managed to room with someone he knows; well, technically, he doesn’t really _know_ Sawamura Daichi all that well, but they’re going to the same university on the same volleyball scholarship and it made perfect sense, after meeting enough times at tournaments and practice matches, to just live together too.

“Now _that’s_ Tokyo Tower.” Daichi lets out a low whistle when it comes into view. Hajime snorts, remembering the stories from training camps Seijou never got to go to.

The Shinkansen eventually pulls in deep somewhere in Tokyo, and Hajime and Daichi wait for the rest of the passengers to bustle out before they pull their heavy suitcases and laden backpacks off the train.

Daichi pulls out his phone when they’ve tucked themselves somewhere out of the crowd, holding it to his ear and tapping his foot. Bokuto and Kuroo are supposed to meet them somewhere, but there’s a suffocating amount of people and their extreme height and remarkably identifiable hairstyles aren’t going to help them out much now.

Daichi mutters something unidentifiable, and hangs up. “Apparently, they’re at a cafe somewhere in the building. Kuroo gave me directions.”

“What’s the place called?” Hajime asks, digging out his own phone and opening up the map app. He doesn’t know Kuroo very well, only meeting them a few times under stadium lights and in sweaty jerseys, but he knows from what Daichi’s told him that Kuroo’s _probably_ not the best at directions.

It takes them almost ten minutes to locate a bubble tea place deep inside the train station, and with it Kuroo and Bokuto. They herd Hajime and Daichi towards yet another platform, a Tokyo metro one this time, and push them onto a train. Distantly, Hajime hopes it’s the right train, but he knows Kuroo and Bokuto have a hell of a lot more Tokyo experience than he does. He’s still mildly surprised when they come up off of a set of grungy stairs on the street that his and Daichi’s dorm is supposed to be on.

“You know, I’m a little impressed you guys managed to get us here without getting lost,” Daichi says once he’s fit his key in the door of their room. It’s not all that exciting: there’s a space that doubles as a kitchen and a living room, if just plopping a couch down qualifies as “living room.” There are two rooms branching off, with a tiny window that overlooks the street below.

“Daichi, honey, if you still want help to Suga’s, kindly shut your trap,” Kuroo says, flopping over the edge of the couch and making himself right at home. Daichi blushes a little and does as he’s told and goes to dump his stuff in his room. His boyfriend’s going to a school that’s _at least_ four train stops away, and a little help on his first way over would help to avert tragedy. “Hey, Iwaizumi, are you going to come with us? We could go get food somewhere or something.”

Hajime shakes his head. “I think I’m gonna stay here and crash. Maybe try and unpack.” He feels like he could sleep for about three days straight if he could.

Bokuto gives him a thumbs up.  “Sounds good. We’ll see you tomorrow?” Hajime nods in agreement

“I’ll bring you back something to eat on my way home,” Daichi adds, coming back out of his room. He stuffs his wallet and phone and keys into the pocket of his sweater after extricating his metro card. He looks at Bokuto and Kuroo. Kuroo’s still on the sofa, his phone propped up over his face. “We good to go?”

Kuroo hops up and he and Bokuto head towards the doorway and stuff their feet in their shoes. “Adios, Iwaizumi,” one of them says. Daichi says goodbye. _See you later._ Kuroo salutes. Daichi closes the door behind them.

And Hajime falls face-first into his bed, thinking about class and getting lost on the subway, and definitely _not_ about trying to find an entrance to a secret world.

.

Hajime manages to scrounge up a job at a coffee shop a couple of blocks away from his dorm, because he’s smart enough to find a source of income to offset his scholarship money before it starts to run out. He only works a couple nights a week, filling up his time with responsibility and thoughtless work, coffees with room for cream and macchiatos with double shots, triple shots. Hajime pumps syrup into the bottom of paper cups and steams milk, and goes home and opens his textbook and takes ugly notes and falls asleep with his headphones still jammed in his ears.

The routine jumps onto Hajime before he can fall into it, sneaking up on him. He lets it crawl up his back, hold him there, stuck, because if he’s held fast to one place he doesn’t have to think about anything beyond the walls of his room. Due dates and exams and his next shift are the only things he tries to keep track of, and then volleyball starts in earnest and he’s got another thing to keep him distracted. It’s _good,_ like _really good._ School’s fun, and interesting, and it makes him think, and he puts extra cash in his pocket at the cafe, and he’s got volleyball.

Hajime’s got friends too who drag him and Daichi out of their dorm on weekends, pulling them deep into the thudding heart of Shibuya. They drink, they laugh, they dance, they get positively _shitfaced._ And then they find their way back to their respective homes and sleep it off, blinking awake headaches and nausea when their alarms go off.

But every so often, Hajime sleeps right on through his alarm. He’s a pretty light sleeper, when he’s not shitfaced drunk, so whenever he stumbles into class or work or whatever else it is he has, he’s just as stunned as everyone else.

This particular morning it takes him a couple hours to shake the sleep from his skin and from his bones, like his drowsiness is stuck to him like warm syrup. The day moves slow, slipping from between Hajime’s fingers. He finds himself fighting to keep his head from drooping over as he tries to keep the orders straight, telling himself not to slop the shot of espresso over the edge of the paper cup.

He works one of those cardboard sleeves around the cup, and he has to squint to read the name scrawled on the side. He says the name— _medium extra hot soy vanilla latte for Oikawa_ —as loud as his tired lungs let him and slides it across the bar. Hajime recognizes the guy, Oikawa apparently, which is to be expected when he always walks in the coffee shop Hajime works at exactly five minutes to closing.

To be completely honest, Hajime kind of wants to beat him up. He knows that sounds pretty bad, but it’s somewhat warranted, right? It’s always up to him steam the soy milk and pump the vanilla flavouring into a cup and pour the shots of espresso in overtop and assure him that _yeah, I remembered to put the foam on_ or _no, I can’t really do the leaf design thing._

And then, to top it all off, the guy— _Oikawa_ —always sends Hajime a wink before he pushes the door open with his shoulder and floats outside, and Hajime can’t ever catch him before he sinks into the crowd, into the thick blood pushing through the city’s veins.

Someone squeezes Hajime’s shoulder as they head for the back, either out of pity for having to deal with another of Oikawa’s drinks, or it’s that obvious Hajime’s bones are about to fall in on themselves—he has no idea which. Either works for him. He runs a rag over the counter and tidies up, a routine he’s sunk so far into he doesn’t even need to think about what he needs to do, and hangs his apron up on his hook. He pulls off the black sweater he’d been wearing to keep warm in the air conditioned cafe, and slings his backpack up and over his shoulders.

Hajime says goodbye to the guys left in the cafe as he pushes the door open, only half ready for the humid heat that wraps its hot fingers around his neck and his wrists, leaving a sweaty sheen.  

At just past ten, the sun is just starting to dip behind Tokyo’s skyline. Fall is just about to split down the middle, and everything in Hajime’s life is spiralling around him as he sits and watches from behind the counter of a coffee shop. He makes it on the train just as the doors start to close, and the streetlights are just flickering to life as he’s walking down his street.

Hajime reaches around and digs his keys out of his pocket, fitting it into the first lock just fine, like it he usually does, and he has to jiggle his key a bit when he’s unlocking the door to his dorm. Like he usually does.

There aren't any shoes at the door, so Hajime drops his shit and pokes his head in to see if Daichi’s home. He's not; Hajime guesses he’s crashing a train ride away at the dorm Suga shares with a couple other pre-med students.

Apparently Daichi’s _not_ at Suga’s, Hajime learns; his phone buzzes with a text just as Hajime flops down on their ratty couch.

> **Daichi:** hey! we’re planning on heading to shibuya tonight! Suga and i are at kuroo’s, if you’d like to come!

Hajime weighs his options for half a second, then decides it’s probably in his best interests to leave the house.

> **You:** i’m on my way over. i’ll be like 20 minutes

He thinks about the cold that’s going to set in later, and grabs a sweater. He zips it up as he heads out the door, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched over as he threads his way between people and buildings towards Kuroo’s dorm.

It’s oddly busy for ten thirty, but maybe that’s because it’s a weekend and it’s nice out. It’s just this side of a crowd, enough people that Hajime has to pay attention to where his feet land. People laugh loudly, throwing their hands in the air; pointing out things on the other side of the street.

Hajime watches a boy with bleached hair with half of it pulled up into a bun that shows off his dark roots drift through the crowd, swallowed up in a thick red hoodie. He looks like he’s looking for something, or some _one,_ behind where Hajime is, so Hajime twists around to see if he can get a look.

He can’t get a good look at anything from where he is. Someone shoves him, and Hajime stumbles, falling into someone else. There’s a yelp, the crowd gathering around the girl who fell. Hajime’s halfway to the ground, when someone snaps something about _look where you’re going, idiot!_ and he apologizes and gets himself up and sets his feet firmly on the ground.

.

Hajime only has to knock on the door once before Kuroo yanks it open, his knees bent a little and his arms open wide. “Welcome to the party house, my friend.”

“Hey, Kuroo.” It takes Hajime a full thirty seconds to realize Bokuto’s propped up on Kuroo’s back, his hands placed firmly on Kuroo’s shoulders. “Hey, Bokuto.” Bokuto nods solemnly in greeting.   

Kuroo leans backward awkwardly and shouts into the room behind him, “Ladies, the party has begun!” almost drowned out by Bokuto’s whoop of excitement.

“Hey, man, come on in,” Kuroo says, trying to step backwards out of the genkan with Bokuto on his back. “I’ll get the rest of us, then we’re off.” Hajime nods, watching them waddle back into the room. It only takes a good fifteen minutes to get all five of them organized to go. Suga pats his bag, making sure it’s still there. Kuroo runs back into their living room to grab his phone, which is still plugged into the speaker and playing horrible rap music. Daichi wraps his arm around Suga’s shoulders. Bokuto checks his hair. Hajime stands and watches.

Kuroo herds them out the door and locks it behind him, shoving them all down the stairs and to the train station, descending deep below the street to where a packed car is waiting for them . It takes them towards the city’s heart, swallowing them up, dragging them in deeper, jerking.

The train dumps them right in Shibuya’s beating heart. The three of them are shoved deep in the middle of a crowd. It won’t let them decide their own direction, instead pulling them along by their sleeves, insistently tugging.

Bokuto shouts something that Hajime can’t make out, and Kuroo replies, laughing, turning to say something to Daichi and Suga at his shoulder. Hajime watches, trying to make out the words on their lips.

.

 _God,_ Suga loves dancing.

The music’s only a thudding beat in Suga’s veins, only urging his heartbeat on. He grins, letting the hum of the people around him fill him up with a kind of buzzing hum, an _energy,_ something that Suga wants to burn slow through him until he’s spent.

He meets Daichi’s gaze across the room. His smile is the colour of the sky on a Sunday afternoon in late November, crossed somewhere between blush pink and warm blue, familiar and comfortable and reassuring. Deep in his bones, he wants to push aside anyone who he needs to so he can lay his palm on Daichi’s chest, possessive, and suck a mark into the supple skin tucked under his ear.

He succumbs quickly, turning on his heel to head deep into the heat of the crowd to for Daichi. He slams high fives into Bokuto and Kuroo’s waiting palms, accepts the cup pushed into his hand, and pushes himself to his tiptoes, scanning the crowd.

The club is pulsing. Dancing is synonymous with grinding, with the utter lack of space. Suga finds himself nodding to the heavy beat without thinking.

It takes him a while, but Suga eventually finds Daichi in a corner, nursing a bottle of something overly masculine looking, locked in conversation with Hajime. “Hey guys,” Suga says, slinging an arm over Daichi’s shoulder. He sends Hajime a pointed glance. “What's your favourite kind of chocolate? For Valentine's, or something.”

“Um,” Hajime slurs, “I like regular chocolate? Like, milk chocolate. Not the dark stuff; that's complete shit, and the white stuff is like … I don't know, frozen milk or something? Milk ice cubes?” Hajime squints, like he's trying to figure out what he just said. “No, I like milk chocolate, especially if it's got a bunch of shit in it, you know, hazelnuts and stuff. That's the _shit.”_

“Thanks Iwaizumi, you've just saved the lives of store clerks everywhere.”

“You’re welcome?” Hajime says, very obviously confused. He nods at Daichi, and waddles off into the crowd.

“God, he’s such a wreck when he’s drunk,” Daichi says when Hajime’s out of earshot. “Having a conversation with him is like talking to a wall.”

“Mmm, I know babe,” Suga purrs, smoothing the palm of his hand up the flat of Daichi’s chest.

Daichi hums under his breath, leaning into Suga’s touch. He wraps one of his arms around Suga’s waist and pulls him close.

.

Iwaizumi Hajime’s rise and inevitable fall can be told in the time it takes to make a latte, specifically for that guy who always walks in exactly five minutes to closing. 

Which is, if you’re interested, two minutes and sixteen and a half seconds. From order to _medium extra hot vanilla soy latte for Oikawa,_ and _yeah, I put the foam on_ and _no, I can’t really do the leaf design thing._ This doesn’t include the eleven seconds it takes for him to slip a sleeve over top or to fit the lid on.

Here goes:

He’s drunk. Drunker than he’s been in a while. He can’t string thoughts together. Bokuto and Kuroo are drunk too, bouncing off each other and dancing, their cheeks flushed with heat and alcohol. Daichi and Suga are in a corner, their eyes heavy, and Hajime knows he shouldn’t be watching the way that Suga drags the tips of his fingers down Daichi’s chest.

Something deep inside of Hajime’s head tells him to turn around and walk out the door. He listens. He needs air. The club is crowded and everything is illuminated in sweaty pastels and flashing lights, and Hajime ducks under arms to push his way through to the door.

The streets shake under Hajime’s feet, and he breathes in through his nose. The streets are still full, too full, so he turns and ducks into an alley, lined with brick shiny with rain Hajime didn’t know had fallen. He takes out his phone, and texts Daichi that he’s gonna head back. He needs air.

The streets beat, thudding with bass or pumping thick blood back to the city’s heart; it’s hard to tell. Red tinges the corners of his vision. Laughter, light and quiet and spinning, lies low like fog. It’s quiet, barely audible over the swirl of blood, and then it’s loud, pounding, a fist raised to match a rhythm, to the beat of the music. Or is that the beat of his heart?

Hajime turns the corner, reaches to grab at the wall of a building. His hand slips on it, the rain that fell earlier turning the concrete slippery; Hajime can make out the reflection of the street lights in the sidewalk before his vision goes fuzzy. When he breathes in, the air is sweet—just this side of sickly—smelling of glowing white flowers, and deep cinnamon and vanilla, a perfume that he realizes a moment too late is familiar.   

He manages to catch one hand on the sidewalk when he falls, his knee knocking painfully on the hard ground. His sharp intake of breath is the last thing he hears, the last thing he’s fully conscious of, before his eyelids—which almost hurt they’ve been open so long—flutter shut. Well, that and the laughter that suddenly finds its way through the fog; a sharp needle piercing flesh.

There’s a flash of bright eyes too, but he can’t quite place the colour. Hajime imagines the smirk attached to them on the backs of his eyelids—a black and white movie told in colour—before his consciousness fades into the black of Tokyo’s midnight.

.

This is what Tadashi sees: someone collapsing, someone only recognizable by the shape of their shoulders silhouetted against the coloured lights. Tadashi watches them grab at the slippery concrete walls, desperately searching for something to hold onto, and then they're … Gone. Blinking out of existence.

He’s managed to see this kind of thing a few times before, caught a few people stepping through some kind of … door, or portal, or tunnel, or who knows what. This is the first time he’s thought to bring his camera, though. Tadashi watched it happen in slow motion, through the viewfinder of his camera. He’d had the thought to click the shutter a few times, so when he does manage to pull the camera away from his face and click through the images, he's sees that he's managed to collect a story in pictures; albeit an unexplainable one.

The photos don’t look that great on his camera’s tiny screen, so Tadashi forces himself to turn his camera off and look at them later, on his laptop, after he’s put them through photoshop.

He packs up his equipment, slings his camera bag over his shoulder and tucks his tripod under his arm, and starts in the direction of his apartment. The streets start to empty when he passes under the entrance gates, and even if this part of Tokyo isn’t ever _really_ quiet, this is pretty close.  

The glow of Tadashi’s laptop’s screen is the only light in his family’s apartment when he staggers in. He fumbles through his phone, trying to turn on the flashlight, and then trips over way too many things to bother counting as he heads to the kitchen table, flicking on lights on his way. He hooks his camera up to his laptop, taps a few keys to get it to turn on. He gets it to start importing his photos, and then turns to fill up the coffeepot and set it to brew. There’s suddenly an awful buzzing coming from Tadashi’s pants pocket, and it takes longer than he cares to admit for him to remember he has a cellphone, and that sometimes people call his cellphone. He almost drops it when he pulls it out of his pocket, putting the phone up to his ear as soon as he recognizes the caller ID.

“Since when do you call me?” Tadashi says instead of hello, jamming his phone between his shoulder and his ear so can use two hands to grab a mug and fill it up with coffee.  

“‘Hi’ would be nice,” Tsukishima deadpans, the icy edge in his voice only a habit Tadashi’s a little too comfortable with.

“Fuck you, Tsukki. What do you want?” Tadashi pushes, and he’d normally apologize, or even say something like that in the first place, but he’s really tired and his eyes are starting to hurt, and he has these pictures to look at, and, eventually, after he’s probably only gotten three hours of sleep, school in the morning.

He pours a bit of milk in his coffee, and dumps some sugar in. Probably too much sugar.

“Can I come over? I found something for your stupid project.” Tsukishima says. Tadashi still thinks it’s a little weird Tsukishima had even called him in the first place. Tsukishima’s an avoid-contact-at-all-costs kind of guy on the best days.

“Sure, I guess,” Tadashi says, quieter. He swings the fridge door open, just to have something to do; also to put the milk away. “You can sleep here, if you want.”

“Fine. You want me to bring any food?” Tsukishima asks. “Burgers or something?”

“Burgers are good. You know what I like, right?” Tadashi just wants to make sure, because even if he pretty much knows Tsukishima like the back of his hand, he doesn’t want to end up with chicken nuggets instead of fries.

“Yamaguchi, we’ve known each other since grade school; I know your McDonald’s order by heart.”

“Fine! Get it, then!” Tadashi allows, laughing. “Text me when you’re here.”

“I know.” Tsukishima says, hanging up.

.

When Hajime wakes up next, he’s in bed. Not his bed, though, he’s tucked in with covers up to his chin and a pillow nestled under his head. He can hear birds chirping somewhere, but when he sits up and leans back on his hands and looks for the open window _—_ there isn’t one. The room looks like a hotel; walls plastered in worn yellow wallpaper, an air conditioner whirring in the corner. But aren’t air conditioners connected to a source of fresh air? Don’t they need it? Hajime falls back into bed. He notices a fire alarm on the ceiling, green light flashing in a headily familiar pattern— _on, off, on, off_ _—_ a beacon warning him of some oncoming storm. It ends up lulling him back asleep, instead.

His unconscious is a black pool he dives into headlong, his body arching slowly before he slips underneath the surface. Any other dreams he might of had drown in the black. Hajime floats face down, not breathing, not even struggling for breath.

There are fingers in his hair the next time he opens his eyes, scratching against his scalp in a way that’s comforting in its familiarity. Hajime’s on his side, and whoever’s fingers are in his hair must be behind him somewhere. He draws a deep breath in through his nose and flattens himself so he’s on his back.

But the room’s sunk into black.

Hajime’s pretty sure he was able to make out the pattern of the wallpaper when he came to the second time. Pretty sure he blinked when he flipped over; lights on one moment, off the next, his eyelids a blurry buffer between the two.

He blinks a few more times, either to try and turn the lights back on, or to adjust to the sudden switch. Sleep is trying to take over again, the black waves lapping at his ankles, rising persistently higher. Hajime pushes it away.

In favour of clearing his throat, Hajime skips straight to his question so whoever’s beside him doesn’t have a chance to run away. He knows the answer, _God,_ does he _know,_ but the part of him that knows is stuck under the part of him that’s really, really, drunk. This is too close to too good, and even drunk Hajime knows he’s got to confirm _something._

“Where am I?” _Who’re you, what’s going on, why’d you take me away?_

His voice is rough, like it’s been put through a laundry machine. It sounds completely and utterly out of place in the swirling dark. He coughs, and sleep is suddenly halfway up his chest, constricting. He coughs again, once.

The voice that answers is a dream; soft like Hajime had always imagined a cloud would feel like under his toes, sweet like perfumed summer air.

_Do I need to tell you? Can’t you figure it out for yourself?_

There’s a hand on the side of his face then, fingers dragging down the line of his cheekbone. Nail catching on his jaw, and Hajime can feel the angry red line that gets left.

It serves to take all the air out of his body in a single touch, out his mouth in a stuttering exhale, and Hajime’s clutching at the blankets draped over him as he tries to steady his breathing. But he can’t, nothing will stay in, and oh _fuck,_ there’s something searing starting in the centre of his chest, like someone’s plunging a fire-hot knife in through his ribs. He feels his mouth open, all on its own, but he can’t make any sound, can’t yell or scream or swear or even cry; he’s stuck there, with his back arched, his mouth open on a scream he can’t let out, pushing whatever’s stuck inside him further and further between his ribs.

He’s not all that surprised when his vision goes black—only able to tell the difference between the flat black of the room and the inky black of his subconscious because the second is kind of odd in its familiarity, like he’s stuck in that empty space before a dream—but it’s interrupted by a series of images. They’re jumping over each other, fighting for the top, each blurry and a sloppy amalgamation of colours, of people, memories too, all of them distant and messy. Flashes—out of focus in the prettiest way—fall together, bright purples and vivid royal blues and cyans. Magenta and mustard and an orange that could never exist in the waking world.

Colours coalesce into images. Familiar ones. Looking into his dorm from the doorway, craning his neck so he can see around the corner. He catches his ratty couch, the old blanket thrown over the armrest, half-filled glasses of water leaving dirty circles on the coffee table as they wait for someone to pick them up. Somewhere in the back of his head, somewhere that he’s simply _not,_ Hajime wonders what those glasses are waiting for.

And then, just like that, he remembers that he’s been pushed under, that this—whatever it is, this vision, this dream—isn’t his. It doesn’t belong in his head; it’s meant to be someone else’s memories, someone else’s dream.  

Hajime panics. He tries to push the images away, tries to shove his eyelids open. He’s suddenly aware of his breathing speeding up—he tries to control it, tries not to pant—and his gasp catches on a moan when something plunges even further between his ribs. He tries blindly to reach for something, anything, slamming his hand over and over again where he knows something is sinking deeper and deeper into his chest; closer and closer to his heart.

But just as he’s repeating _oh god, I’m dead, fuck, I’m gonna die_ over and over again like a wish he desperately wants to hang onto, he opens his eyes.

.

“Okay, so,” Tadashi says, digging his burger out of paper bag Tsukki had set on his table. “You said you had something?”

“Mm, yeah. I was talking to Kuroo. Can I finish eating first?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tadashi says. “You know, if you get ketchup on my bed, I’ll kill you.” Tadashi spins around and props his feet up on his bed where there’s room.

“Come sit with me?”

“Seriously, if I find gross red stuff when I get into to bed tonight, _you will die.”_

“Yamaguchi,” Tsukki says, again. Louder.

Tadashi lifts his head up a little. “What?”

“Come sit over here with me.”

“Only if you promise not to get any ketchup in my bed,” Tadashi argues, weakly.

“Fine.”

Tadashi balances his food in his hands and stands up, flopping down on his bed and scootching backwards so he’s leaning up against Tsukki’s chest. He dips a fry in ketchup and drops it in his mouth.

Tsukki unwraps his burger, crumples up the greasy yellow wrapping into a ball, and lobs it towards the corner of Tadashi’s room. He and Tadashi eat the rest of their food without talking, letting themselves melt into one thing with four legs and four arms. It’s easy, and practiced, and they’re really good at it. It’s kind of like a song that you never forget how to play, or a bike you never forget how to ride, but _better_ because it’s Tsukki and even if they’re a little dysfunctional, it still always works.

Tadashi drags his last fry through his ketchup, drops it in his mouth, and sits up in a way that he figures is a little more conducive to serious paranormal conversation. “You said you were talking to Kuroo about something?” Tadashi also figures the best course of action is to just go for it.

“You know how Kuroo’s close with Kozume, right?” Tadashi nods. “Kuroo was complaining to me about how Kozume is always going off places without telling anyone and I kind of told him to try following, you know, just to see what happens. Apparently Kuroo followed him all the way to somewhere in Shibuya, and then he just disappeared in some alley or something.”

Tadashi frowns. “Isn’t it pretty easy to lose people in Shibuya? Especially someone small like Kozume-san?”

“That’s what I thought, but it’s Kuroo, and you know how obsessed with Kozume he is. It’s downright _creepy.”_ Tsukki flops over on his back, as if to punctuate his thought. He closes his eyes.

“Like that guy I took photos of…” Tadashi murmurs. He’d managed to catch someone falling one second, and then just…   _gone_ the next, the timestamp on his camera drawing those few seconds out into eons.

 _“Exactly,”_ Tsukki agrees. “Hey, speaking of, can I see the photos you got?”

“Shit, yeah, I completely forgot. Give me second,” Tadashi apologizes, bounding off the bed to grab his laptop. He sets it up between them on his covers, tapping a few keys so the screen lights up and then opening the images. Tsukishima leans in to get a little bit of a better look.

“Oh wait, wait wait wait wait _wait.”_ Tsukishima jolts almost violently, and there’s wild recognition in his eyes. “I—Yamaguchi, I know who that is, that’s—that’s, oh _God,_ what’s his _name?”_

Tadashi wants to help, but he doesn’t know how. His hands raise on their own accord, still as the world freezes and as Tsukki racks his brain for the name of the guy who can disappear into nothing.

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” Tsukishima says finally. “He works at the cafe.”

Tadashi almost leaps out of his chair with this information. _“Tsukki,_ we’ve got a lead! You’ve got us a lead!” It takes a couple seconds for Tadashi to realize he’d grabbed Tsukishima’s hands in his excitement, clutching his fingers tightly between his own. He knows his cheeks are going a bit red, and he drops Tsukishima’s hands quickly. To cover, he says, “You’ll talk to him right? See if he knows anything?”

There’s a bit of pink on Tsukishima’s cheeks too, Tadashi notices when he watches Tsukishima nod. He wiggles a little closer to Tadashi, like he always does when he’s tired and a little more bendable and seeking someone (It’s always Tadashi) else’s warmth. “You wanna get the light?”

Tadashi gathers up all the garbage still lying on his bed to throw away and gets up. He throws out the garbage, brushes his teeth, and takes off his jeans before he flicks the light off. It’s dark when he climbs in bed, and he’s glad he doesn’t have to make Tsukki get rid of his jeans this time, that he passed out under the covers instead of over them.

It’s warm in his blankets, even warmer with Tsukishima’s body heat, and with lingering thoughts of Kuroo and Kenma and the man he’d taken photos of, Tadashi drifts off into sleep.

.

Hajime’s in his room, when he slams back to consciousness. In his dorm, with its too-small window and desk shoved into the far corner. His sheets are tangled between his legs like he’d been thrashing as he slept, like he’d been having some sort of nightmare, and the second-hand fan is blowing stale, warm air in lazy circles across the room. He shuts his eyes closed, hoping maybe the afterimage of something will show up on the back of his eyelids. But they’re black. Empty.

The fan doesn’t stop spinning, doesn’t stop blowing morbidly warm air across his morbidly warm skin. His skin feels sticky from the humidity, like he’d been baking in it as he slept. It feels like the air has soaked down in through Hajime’s pores and wrapped around his veins and squeezed them so tight it’s almost like they’re choking. He needs to breath; he needs to fill his lungs with fresh air that’s, in an ideal world, a degree or two cooler than his body temperature.

So Hajime slides himself out of bed, not bothering to throw on a shirt before wandering into the kitchen. He fills a glass of water, empties it, turns the tap so the water’s not so grossly lukewarm, fills it up again, and collapses on the couch opposite of Daichi.

“When did you get back last night?” Daichi asks, not looking up from his laptop. The room’s quiet, except for the sound of Daichi’s fingers on the keyboard.

Hajime thinks about it for half a second. He doesn’t know. “I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t really remember.”

Daichi’s fingers pause, his eyes lift to meet Hajime’s for maybe half a second. “You must of had a good night, then.”

“Probably,” Hajime scoffs, leaning forward to set his glass on the table. He lets his head fall backwards as far as it will go, and closes his eyes again. There aren’t any flashes of colour this time, magenta bleeding into to lime green to some beat he can’t remember, or shapes with six sides too many, or of anything that’ll point him in any remotely familiar direction.  “How was yours?”

Daichi laughs heartily. “You know, the usual, Bokuto and Kuroo got _scary wasted,_ and Suga and I pretty much had to carry them back to their dorm.”

A door closes somewhere, too far away to have a name, deep in a hotel lined with old yellow wallpaper that’s peeling in strips in the corners; a lock clicks closed, the sound echoing through Hajime’s head, bouncing on his bones. Hajime snaps his head up, quickly glancing around the room to see if there are any leftover smudges of unimaginable colours, or washed out wallpapers.

Instead, he watches Suga close the door of Daichi’s room and trail into the living room, one of Daichi’s bedsheets draped over his shoulders like a cape. “You feeling okay?” Daichi says, pushing away his laptop and striding over to Suga, who just moans sadly in response.

Daichi, somehow, never gets hungover, which must be some added bonus of handsome, gay, volleyball players who major in education. But there’s a catch, of course, and that catch is that Suga suffers the most awful hangovers known to the human race. If Hajime were a military man, he would stand up and salute him.

Suga is herded to the couch by Daichi, who darts into their kitchen to fill up a glass of water and grab some painkillers. Suga groans again, slouching down so he’s curled up on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest. He tightens his fingers around his bedsheet and draws it tighter around him. “How’re you doing, Iwaizumi-san?”

 _I’m great! I’m pretty sure I got magically kidnapped and stabbed but there is literally not a single drop of blood on my person, you know, the usual!_ Hajime wants to laugh. “I’m fine,” he lies. “Glad I’m not hungover like you.”

“Fuck you,” Suga says weakly, sticking out his tongue. “I can’t be completely perfect.”

“News to me.” Daichi sets himself on the couch and helps Suga sit up. “I think you’re perfect.” Hajime wrinkles his nose. Suga giggles a bit, and takes the proffered water and ibuprofen. Daichi turns his attention to Hajime. “What happened to you anyway? I got your text and then you weren’t here when Suga and I got back and _—_ ”

“Thank god for that. _No one_ wanted to be here last night,” Suga interrupts, poking Daichi in the thigh.

“ _—_ _And,_ Suga and I were too… um… preoccupied to worry.” Daichi finishes, his face a shade darker red than when he started.

Hajime wants to explain. He _wants_ to. He doesn’t know how, though. “I … don’t really remember much,” he starts, speaking slowly as if he’s explaining it to himself too. “I remember everything up until I texted you. And then I went outside. Just to get some air, or something.” Hajime can feel the bass pounding in the ground under his feet, the wet stone under his fingers. “It had rained. Everything was wet. I went into an alley, and I fell, and…” he stumbles a bit here. “I woke up here. I must have got home somehow.”

He looks up. Daichi looks contemplative. Suga looks suspicious, like he knows something Hajime doesn’t. Hajime doesn’t push it.

But he _wants_ to push it, because he _knows_ that was the place he went when he was eleven, and if Suga knows something… He holds off, though.

Suga leans up and mumbles something to Daichi, and he leaps up, pressing a kiss to Suga’s temple before he runs into their room to get something.

.

“Hey, you’re Iwaizumi, right?”

Hajime turns at the sound of his name, closing his eyes to maybe shove away any bouts of dizziness. He spins around as fast as he dares, one hand deep in the pocket of his jacket, the other pulling at his headphones.

It’s that guy from work. The one that always walks in five minutes to closing and orders a soy latte, whose smile is about thirty times too big for his face, and whose hair somehow stays up after the sun goes down.

Hajime has no interest in starting a conversation with this guy, especially when he really needs some tylenol and a glass of water and a nine and a half hour nap.

“I’m Iwaizumi, yeah,” he says, and pulls his keys of out of his pocket and hopes Oikawa takes the hint.

“You work at that coffee shop!” Oikawa says, his voice rising in excitement. “You’re the one who always makes my lattes! I’m sorry for always getting there so late, my job is super intense, I’m technically off at 9:30 but I’m never out the door until quarter to ten. And by then I’m so tired, and your shop is right on the way to the train station, so there’s no way I couldn’t get something,” Oikawa says. He looks so expectant, so awake, like he’s hanging off the edge of something and he’s waiting for Hajime to haul him back up again.

The guy sticks out his hand suddenly. “Shit, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Oikawa Tooru.”

Hajime shakes Oikawa’s hand, weakly, because he is about to collapse.

“Cool, uh, can I talk to you later? I just got off my shift, and I really need to _—_ ”

“Oh my god, of course! Go relax!” Oikawa says, a little reserved, his eyes wide with apology.

“Thanks,” Hajime responds, quietly, because that’s all his brain can come up with. He sticks his key in the door, unlocks it.

“See you soon, then! Maybe at your coffeeshop!” Oikawa trills, starting to back down the sidewalk.

“Yeah, maybe,” is all Hajime says before he closes the door and locks it.

.

Coffee is almost literally the most boring thing in the world after parallel universes.

Or pocket universes, or some kind of carefully personalized purgatory, or _whatever,_ but Hajime makes a point of showing up to work like nothing has happened. Like nothing's changed.

If Hajime’s honest with himself, the work is helping. It's familiar, and Hajime can easily lose himself in lattes and cappuccinos for a couple hours, purging all thoughts of potential parallel universes to the back of his brain. When his boss asks if he’ll pick up an extra shift, Hajime says yes right away.

And there’s always Oikawa to distract him.

“When are you gonna figure out how to do the patterns in the foam, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa scrunches up his nose, inspecting his latte like there’s something dead and awful floating in it.

Hajime ignores Oikawa, and grabs the next cup. “Don’t call me Iwa-chan.”

Pouting, Oikawa presses a lid to his cup, and rearranges the strap of his bag on his shoulder. He pushes the sleeve of his jacket up a bit so he can check his watch. “When are you off?”

“What’s it to you?”

“We can walk home together!” Oikawa exclaims from the milk station.

 _What?_ How is Hajime supposed to say no to that? “You’ll have to wait for me to clean up.”

“That’s fine! I’ll make myself comfy!” Oikawa takes his latte and perches himself on one of the bar stools. Hajime groans.

Sure enough, Oikawa makes inane conversation as Hajime helps the last few customers and wipes down the counter. His work goes by stupidly fast until Oikawa’s holding the door open for him and they’re walking in the direction of Hajime’s apartment.

Oikawa walks a little too close, according to Hajime, and he throws his hands a little too forcefully when he explains something. The tips of Oikawa’s fingers flick Hajime’s face a few too many times, but he ignores it, because Hajime is _nice._ And he wants to get home soon, and he’s pretty sure pointing out something like walking too close will get him home slower than usual.

As it happens, Hajime doesn’t need to worry about getting home late. They’ve barely walked a block before Oikawa is saying goodbye and thank you and beaming at Hajime and turning off the street. Hajime tells him _I’ll see you tomorrow._ Oikawa smiles again. Hajime almost immediately loses sight of him in the crowd.

.

A sliver of the moon cuts through clouds and shadow, setting the edges of the world soft.

The tops of houses don’t exist, really. The line where rooftops meets sky wavers, cold, pliable, something you could blur with just the tip of your finger. The streets dove into dark long ago. Fluorescent signs, advertising television sets, and deals on washing machines line the windows pushing in on the streets until Akaashi feels like he’s almost suffocating on gaudy lights and laughter and the thick smell of street food.

Akaashi knows there’s somewhere nearby he can slip out of sight, but he can’t place the exact location. It’s got to be somewhere deep in the shadows, somewhere no one could see him as he passes through one world to the next.

Soft, diffused light plays on the faces of the people in the street, light pink and lavender from the bright open sign across the street. Akaashi rushes down the street, scanning for something familiar through the crowds of people — tourists and locals winding around each other, cheeks ruddy with the heat — looking for a… a kind of heat, or _glow,_ that guides down the right the path.

The crowd gets thicker. Someone laughs; someone else’s fingers trace down the length of Akaashi’s arm. He shivers and moves faster, starting to shove people out of his way as he frantically searches for something, _something,_ to grab on to, to pull on, to steady him in the swirling mass of people he can’t even place.

Someone grabs him by the arm and the neck and jerks him backward, and there’s pressure over his mouth and his nose, something sickly sweet filling his lungs. His eyes blink shut. The pounding music starts to fade away, into darkness. He feels himself being dragged back, can hear the wind rushing past his ears. Suddenly, the movement stops and he’s on his back on the floor, some dingy hotel room with no windows by the looks of it. Of course.

“Did you _really_ need to pull me in like that?” Akaashi asks once he’s upright again, shaking the last of the dust off his clothes. There’s an awful mark on the sleeve of his jacket that he’s almost 100% sure won’t come out. “I am _fully capable_ of getting me here on my own.”

His boss pouts. “I _know that._ But—it’s an emergency and I needed you here an hour ago.”

“Whatever. What’s going on?” Akaashi shrugs off his jacket and throws it on the chair beside … whatever name his boss has decided on for the week. “What are we calling you today? And it better not be some Greek island, I’m sick of those.”  

“I’ve been thinking about switching to Norse mythology, actually.”

“You can’t seriously make me call you _Thor.”_

“I can make you do whatever I want,” his boss, _Thor,_ apparently, says. “Can we please get down to business? We have some actually _important_ things to deal with here, Akaashi.”

Akaashi flops down on the chair opposite his boss, spreading his legs in an utterly unbecoming way. “What have we got this time?” It’s an ugly hotel chair, like someone had made something to sit on out of cardboard and then plastered it with pale yellow stripes.  

“Some things have… changed, in our leadership. Things are shifting.”

This gets Akaashi’s attention. “Do the rest of us know?”

His boss nods. “I let them know a few hours ago. You’re the last one,” he says, locking his eyes with Akaashi’s. Something deep inside of Akaashi comes loose.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What are we going to do?” Akaashi finishes, closing his legs and leaning forward. This… this is _big,_ and they need some kind of plan, something that will get them all out alive, or at least in one piece.

“We’re going to wait it out. Hide in a bunker until the raid is over.” His boss smirks, and Akaashi’s trying to conjure up a single way this plan works. “We’re going to try and get out more, talk to more humans, make friends. Get drunk. Have sex. You know.”

Akaashi nods faintly. _Shit._

His boss passes him a short crystal glass filled with something amber. Akaashi takes it. He’s going to need it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Daichi, Iwaizumi, Kuroo and Bokuto (or as I fondly call them, beef squad plus Kuroo) go to Chuo University on a volleyball scholarship. I am pretty sure this is a thing, but I'm not 100% sure, so please correct me if I've got something wrong!  
> 2) Suga goes to a different school, and he and Daichi agreed they would live in residence for at least their first year instead of renting an apartment together, so they could meet new people and get used to uni life at their respective schools

**Author's Note:**

> As this is a) my first multichap fic and i'm b) an intensely slow writer and c) about to finish high school and d) starting uni in september, updates are going to be slow. fair warning and apologies in advance!
> 
> I am on tumblr @emkayss and twitter @mirakayss please yell with me about assorted things!


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